The Impact of Having A Turtle Make It To The Water

At this point, most WoW players already know the popular meme "A turtle made it to the water" from the Spiaggia senza quartiere World Quest. The quest, narrated by Pergamologa Nola, has you shoot down Albatrosses and Crabs to protect young juvenile turtles and help them reach the water.\r\rWhile these little turtles have generated a plethora of content around the internet, including a music video, we've decided to look deeper into the quest itself. What is the ecological impact on Azeroth from saving thousands of baby turtles every day? Most of those, due to their predators, would, sadly, not make it to the water, since the cycle of life can be cruel. However, we change this cycle by allowing (mostly) every turtle make their way to the water.\r\r\r\rTo help us with this research, we submitted a question to Greg Street, also known as Ghostcrawler, currently Head of Creative Development at Riot Games and was, previously, Lead Systems Designer for World of Warcraft. However, before starting in the gaming industry, Ghostcrawler was an oceanographer, with a Ph.D. in marine science.\r\rBattle for Azeroth added a new World Quest called Beachhead. This quest, offered by the new Tortolan faction (tortoise-esque humanoids), asks you to protect juvenile turtles as they made their way from their nests to the water, which means you end up having to kill wildlife predators like seagulls and crabs. Being an oceanographer, Do you have any insights on the impact of doing such task in mass would cause? Both increasing the turtle population and reducing the predatory one?\rAzeroth has its own ecosystem (where crabs have six legs, whale sharks have giant teeth, etc.) so real world examples may not apply. \r\rIn the real world, seagulls are thriving and crabs are generally doing fine, while 6 of Earth\u2019s 7 sea turtle species are endangered. The causes include habitat loss (including light pollution), the fishing industry (which doesn\u2019t often target turtles but still catches plenty), and garbage in our oceans. Those three factors are directly related to humans. So, pretty much sea turtles need all the help they can get.\r\rLooking at ecology at large (not counting turtles specifically), removing predators can often cause a population explosion of prey species, especially prey that evolved with high reproductive rates to overcome high predation pressure. Witness the explosion of urban deer in the USA because wolves and mountain lions are at much lower populations than they were historically. \r\rOther species are more limited by available food or habitat. I suspect in the case of turtles, that their populations could never get that large because of these other factors. There are only so many beaches in the world upon which to lay eggs, and only so many jellyfish in the ocean to eat. There are reports of early Europeans arriving on wooden ships being kept awake because of the number of turtles bonking into their hulls all night, so clearly they once were much more abundant.\r\rCaveat: I haven\u2019t been an oceanographer for about 20 years now, so my understanding of some of these issues could be outdated.\r\rThanks, Ghostcrawler for the detailed and insightful answer!\r\rWith that, the conclusion we can take is that we're performing a good act to the environment when we help \ud83d\udc22 A \ud83d\udc22 TURTLE \ud83d\udc22 MAKE \ud83d\udc22 IT \ud83d\udc22 TO \ud83d\udc22 THE \ud83d\udc22 WATER \ud83d\udc22, don't you agree?\r\r\rDid you enjoy this news article? Receive instant notifications when the latest news is published through the Wowhead Discord Webhook and join the community with Wowhead's Discord Server, Twitter, and Facebook.

Commenti

Commento di grayshirt

Commento di deathlavitz

on 2018-09-13T23:05:43-05:00

A crab made it to the turtle.

Commento di Dezender

on 2018-09-13T23:07:27-05:00

>know the popular meme\r\rYou mean forced meme.

Commento di Raynre

on 2018-09-13T23:09:30-05:00

These clearly aren't sea turtles. We're not saving baby Tortollans from hungry predators. We're murdering the only defenders that Azeroth - in her weakened state - can send against the turtle horde. All for a pittance of rep.\r\rWe're only pawns to the Old Ones, feeding more uncorrupted, maleable flesh to Azshara's army. When the giant turtle tanks emerge from the oceans as the Queen's vanguard, the last sound that you'll hear is Nola's mocking laughter before you're crushed underfoot.

Commento di baneofturbulence

on 2018-09-13T23:19:45-05:00

These clearly aren't sea turtles. We're not saving baby Tortollans from hungry predators. We're murdering the only defenders that Azeroth - in her weakened state - can send against the turtle horde. All for a pittance of rep.\r\rWe're only pawns to the Old Ones, feeding more uncorrupted, maleable flesh to Azshara's army. When the giant turtle tanks emerge from the oceans as the Queen's vanguard, the last sound that you'll hear is Nola's mocking laughter before you're crushed underfoot.\r\rYou just made my day lol

Commento di TwinkPaladin

on 2018-09-13T23:19:50-05:00

Plost Twist!\rFinal boss of the expasion is a giant turtle corrupted by the Old Golds.

Commento di hotaru251

on 2018-09-13T23:37:47-05:00

am i only one who gets super happy when ghostcrawler answers stuff?\r\ri miss out ghostly crab :(

Commento di 1213501

on 2018-09-13T23:44:01-05:00

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Commento di keksoup

on 2018-09-13T23:49:30-05:00

Conspiracy! I fear that we are being used to mitigate Blizzard's servers' loads in having to spawn new turtles!\r\r...but I still can't stop saving them!

Commento di Engerz

Commento di kajles

I fk hate this WQ, aiming sucks and shooting down those birds mulitple times without killing them.

Commento di Taoma

on 2018-09-14T02:23:31-05:00

Save the real turtles please :( And the bees.

Commento di Harlequino

on 2018-09-14T02:31:46-05:00

Those aren't even sea turtles. They have legs. At this point we probably have killed thousands of them. Is Nola drunk or just nuts?

Commento di Gerolanfalan

on 2018-09-14T02:57:37-05:00

Step 1: Shoot the birds in their stupid faces a million times.\rStep 2: They fly on, completely unscathed.\rStep 3: Nine crabs spawn inside turtles.\rStep 4: Curse loudly.\rStep 5: Start shooting wildly out of frustration until you accidentally finish the quest.\rStep 6: \/slap scrollsage\rStep 7: Reluctantly repeat until exalted, then never speak to a turtle ever again.\r\r\r\ryou forgot to use contract to speed up the rep farm!\r\rCheck "At War" option with them and make Turtle Soup.

Commento di fathom81

on 2018-09-14T03:00:43-05:00

Blizzard uses land turtle mount for baby turtles, as seen in Nazmir when you finish the turtle loa quests.